Pait knew there was no way she was going to be able to sleep, not with Tash sobbing quietly on the bed next to her and Odelia pacing endlessly in the next room over. The only reason Odelia wasn’t out looking for Ori herself was because she refused to take more than twenty steps away from Tash. She wasn’t about to let one missing child become two.
The one soothing sound that Pait heard was Julius’ singing as he passed by every once in a while—he had taken up wandering around camp since he wasn’t allowed to pester Pait while she was with Tash. The other villagers still weren’t keen on having monsters around, and Pait didn’t think Odelia and Tash needed any extra stress.
They had all been restricted to the village all day, and no one was allowed to go anywhere without at least one fully trained guard at their side—even other fully trained guards. Ori had gone missing while on guard duty at the edge of camp, barely out of sight of Rux. One moment there, the next gone. No one was safe alone.
Pait was surprised how irritated she was at being stuck inside the village. She’d been craving walls ever since she left Luvatha’s, terrified by the wide open world around her, but now that there was a wall of people around her, she felt antsy. Part of her wanted to be out with Daivad, searching the chittering shadows for Ori.
But most of her wanted to be in the workshop, surrounded by gears and gadgets, putting the finishing touches on the device she had made that, when finished, would allow her to reach the high shelves so she didn’t have to either risk breaking her neck by climbing up, or sacrifice her pride by asking Daivad for help. It was a simple device that, when the handle was squeezed, made the claw at the other end of a wooden stick grip tight.
In an effort to drown out the sobbing and the pacing, Pait ran through her ideas for future iterations of this device (which she had unofficially head-named the Pincher-Grabber)—as it was now, it would only be able to grip small, light objects, but eventually she wanted to find a way to increase the grip strength. She’d like to find a way to make the length adjustable as well, and she was sure there must be a way to better articulate the claw, give the prongs more joints to allow for some dexterity when grasping more complex or fragile items. A mechanical, extendible hand—how incredible would that be?
She lifted her hand in front of her face in the dark and flexed it, curled her fingers, felt the brown skin on the back of her hand stretch over her knuckles as the milky-pale skin of her palm was squeezed in her grasp. At least, she thought she did this—she was in that hazy place between wake and sleep and couldn’t be sure she wasn’t dreaming.
She wondered if Kadie could teach her about hands, about the way the muscles contracted and the joints fit together—she could see this mechanical hand in her mind, even if she didn’t have the slightest idea how to make it a reality yet. A dark, delicate device of intricate workings, flexing and stretching and dancing in the moonlight. She heard the joints creaking and the belts stretching. Many hands of different colors and sizes, all of them beautiful machines, brilliant engineering. The Dark Mother was the most brilliant engineer of them all—building with bone and strengthening with muscle and connecting with tendons and finishing with flesh until She had created the greatest machine to ever walk the land. She had thought of everything—those exquisite hands, so many hands, dextrous enough to not only hold tools but to craft them, and empty eyes watching her through the window, able to see through the Mother’s Darkness and clever enough to choose the most vulnerable victim, and pale teeth grinning in the moonlight, perfect for chewing up fuel to sustain the machine. And a familiar mouth, fighting with itself, skin stretching and jaw clenching, struggling to keep back the word that was trapped behind gritted teeth—
“Tash.”
Tash bolted up, startling Pait back to the waking world abruptly enough that she didn’t know where she was, why she wasn’t in her room at Daivad’s house.
“Ori?!”
Pait blinked her eyes, trying to rid her vision of the dream-images of a foul face and far too many hands that seemed to be stubbornly sticking around.
“Tash.”
Pait’s blood went ice cold.
She and Tash both looked at the window, which had definitely not been open when they had gotten in bed, where the voice had come from. It was just a flash, but Pait could have sworn she saw three fingers retreating behind the window frame.
“Ori!” Tash bolted for the window.
“No!” Pait scrabbled to grab Tash’s bony arm, but a moment later it had been wrenched from her grasp
(grip strength too weak—strengthen in future iterations)
and Tash was halfway out the window and onto the landing by the time Pait had managed to get her feet on the floor.
“Tasha?!” Odelia shouted, her boots pounding toward the bedroom door.
“Odie, it’s Ori!” Tash crashed clumsily to the landing. “Ori!”
“Tash!”
It was undoubtedly Ori’s voice, but it sounded wrong. Strained, almost choking.
“Wait, Tash,” Pait said, reaching through the window and trying again to grab her arm. “Let Odelia check!”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Tash finally glanced back at Pait, just a hint of hesitation in her eyes. She stepped back from the darkness.
Odelia burst through the door, her rifle drawn but pointed carefully at the floor. “What—?”
“Tash!” Came Ori’s voice again. “Help—!”
Once again, Pait’s hands failed her
(grip strength too weak)
and Tash took off.
“No!” Odelia screamed.
Without thinking, Pait slipped through the window, quick like the thief she was, and sprinted after Tash.
It was mostly instinct that carried Pait on light, bare feet through the village after her friend—she was surprised to find that even in the dark, she knew the village well enough that she managed to avoid crashing into any railings. It was habit, she realized. Without thinking about it, she had been memorizing the buildings, the bridges, the shortcuts and sneak-spots and hidey-holes since the moment she’d set foot on the first landing. A necessary skill in Luvatha that she’d inadvertently taken with her.
“Tash!”
Unfortunately, Tash had years more experience with this place. And she was half monkey. She had made it up a level and onto the next tree before Pait got close. Despite Tash’s quick pace, Ori’s voice stayed always just ahead—leading them steadily toward the edge of camp and weaving in between the pairs of patrolling guards who shouted as they ran by.
Ori, or whatever was using his voice, moved soundlessly. No pounding footsteps or creaking of bridges. All that she could hear were her own light footsteps and Julius’ singing overhead. But Pait thought more than once that she saw a flash of flesh in what moonlight had made its way through the canopy.
“Tash!” The voice sounded … wrong. It was still Ori’s, but… “Tash, stop—!”
It was enough for Tash’s footsteps to finally falter and Pait closed the distance, nearly tackling her and only just managing to keep her feet under her. Pait threw her weight back, dragging Tash backwards, onto the branch-bridge they had just crossed.
“Ay!” A pair of guards one level up on the other side of the tree behind them leaned over the railing to shout, lanterns aloft. “You kids are supposed to be within walls!”
“It’s Ori!” Tash panted, struggling. Her voice went shrill. “Get off me! I heard him! He’s asking help!”
Pait locked her arms around Tash’s thin shoulders, crushing the girl against her chest—
(strengthen in future iterations)
She wouldn’t lose her grip again.
“Tash—!” The voice cut off, coughed, and then came out all in a rush. “Go home—away!” Another cough. “HOME, Tash! Now!”
A violent sob burst out of Tash and she jerked in Pait’s arms. “ORI!”
The guards jumped down behind them hard enough to make the landing shudder, and in the distance, Odelia yelled Tash’s name. But Pait didn’t register these things, because she had just noticed the face peeking around the tree’s trunk ahead of them.
It wasn’t right. The face was too narrow and long, and the fact that the eyeballs bulged in their sockets gave the whole face the appearance that it had been squeezed from the sides until it had warped that way. The face jutted out a good foot from the trunk with a thin, pale, obscenely long neck to hold it aloft. Pait’s eyes, the darkness, must be playing tricks on her.
Then, with absurd fluidity, it stepped into full view.
‘Stepped’ wasn’t the right word. There was no right word.
A mass of flesh of many colors, limbs of all sizes, unfolded itself onto the landing before the girls. It seemed to be many bodies, but it moved as one with a control Pait couldn’t comprehend.
All Pait could think to do was press her hand over Tash’s eyes.
Impossibly, the thing made no sound as dozens of feet, hands, and knees touched down to carry it forward. Faces, stretched and smashed, yawned out of the mass, screaming silently.
One head, the one on the too-long neck, snaked out in front, jaw stretched twice as wide as should be possible. Five different hands reached toward them, and the thing rushed forward.
Pait tried to stumble back, toward the approaching guards, but the mass of bodies was too fast. She wouldn’t even be able to make it back across the bridge.
The guards behind her were shouting, their footsteps making ten times the noise that this thing was as it surged toward her, rolling off the landing and onto the bridge—
“FUCK YOU, SIR!”
Pait couldn’t process what was happening. A pale blur and the flapping of wings, a familiar shriek, warm liquid spattering across her face, and then the mass reeling back, its bulging eyes now reduced to bloody holes in its sockets. For the first time, the mass of flesh made a sound—from every mouth it had. An echoing, furious, pained scream that would haunt Pait for the rest of her life.
Half a dozen hands reached up to seize the pale blur—but it simply dissolved into black smoke.
A gunshot rang out, but if the flesh felt the bullet, Pait couldn’t tell. It was too busy swiping futilely at the black smoke that Pait finally understood was Julius, and—
With a strange squelching, the bloody, oozing mess of the creature’s left eye was retracted into its misshapen skull, and, after a wet pop, a new eye emerged.
It was all Pait could do to keep hauling Tash backwards and not vomit all over her. Or shit herself.
A sword slashed on Pait’s left, cleaving off one of the many arms, and another bullet buried itself in a stretch of flesh that might have been a belly. The guards.
The one-eyed head hissed, seeming more annoyed than pained, and retracted its bleeding limb deep into its mass. Another slash, and—with the same speed and silence that it had arrived, the flesh retreated. Three frantic heartbeats later, the thing was gone.
The only evidence it had ever been there was the severed limb to Pait’s left, the spatter of blood across her face, and a few waving leaves where it had disappeared.
“Ori!?” Tash shrieked.
But Ori was gone.
Pait knew. Because she had seen his face. In there with all the rest.